


Five Course Meal

by kisahawklin



Category: Leverage
Genre: Author's Favorite, Drabble Sequence, Food, Multi, Quintuple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-02
Updated: 2009-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I spent three hours slaving over a hot stove for you pathetic ingrates."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Course Meal

The first course is simple, taking little by way of preparation except choosing good product. Eliot always serves oysters when they're available; he's been known to go to extraordinary measures to get them when they're not. He got these at the wharf – he's got a friend down there now, which is a strange but welcome situation.

Parker eats the oysters like a pro. It's weird, he expected her to be squeamish, but Hardison is the one staring at the shells like they might up and bite him.

"Raw?" Hardison asks warily. "Is that safe?"

Parker laughs brightly and tips back another.

* * *

"There's no lettuce."

Eliot smiles at Parker, tight and fake. "It's a beet and jicama salad. It's more like a slaw."

"It doesn't look like cole slaw," she says, poking at the vegetables it took him nearly half an hour to julienne.

"It's not cole slaw," Eliot says, kicking Hardison under the table for laughing behind his hand. "It's _a_ slaw, it means the ingredients are put together in a particular way or there's a particular cooking technique–"

"But it's not cooked," Parker says, scowling.

"That's because it's a salad," Eliot says through clenched teeth.

"But there's no lettuce."

* * *

"It is not the same thing," Eliot complains. "Hamburgers are the worst parts of the cow, shredded and covered in crap so you can't taste it. This is filet mignon!"

"Which," Hardison says calmly, taking two pieces of the bread Eliot ground flour for _by hand_, "if I shredded it, put it between some bread, and cover it with-" he glances around the table "-stone ground mustard, it would be a really _expensive_ hamburger."

"And pickles!" Parker adds.

Eliot groans and lets his forehead hit the table. "I spent three hours slaving over a hot stove for you pathetic ingrates."

* * *

Parker tips her glass up as soon as Eliot finishes pouring the ice wine into it, finishing it in one long swallow.

"Ahhhhh," Parker says, holding her glass out for more.

Hardison's eyeing his glass like he might try it too, but Eliot raises an eyebrow, and Hardison sets the crystal back down delicately.

"You're supposed to _sip_ the wine," Eliot explains, not quite patiently. "Between bites of cheese."

"I don't like cheese," Parker says, and Eliot's glad to see disbelief on Hardison's face too. "What?" she says, shrugging. "It doesn't agree with me."

"I know exactly how it feels."

* * *

After his last course and all the plates have been cleared, Eliot hands out small plates and dessert forks. He sits back down and kicks his legs out, lacing his fingers behind his head and smiling at them, waiting.

Parker and Hardison exchange a look, glancing down at their plates and back at the kitchen before turning their eyes to Eliot, almost creepily in unison.

"What are you looking at me for?" Eliot asks. "You were supposed to bring dessert."

Parker smirks at him, a magically-appearing pair of handcuffs dangling from her fingers. "Oh, don't worry," she says, "we did."

**Author's Note:**

> A five things fic, of sorts, for _Leverage_, which I hoped I would have written more for by this point. Five connected drabbles. Thanks to [](http://the-wanlorn.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://the-wanlorn.dreamwidth.org/)**the_wanlorn** for a quick beta, of course all remaining errors my own.


End file.
